Sunday, September 23, 2012

Jaybee: 1977


Back in June, as part of my Secret History series, I posted about 1977.

And any time I post about a year based on when music gets released, I’ve got my own personal version of that year, too, based on what I bought/experienced.  

As a kid, you’re pretty dependant on the radio, so you have the current music of the day to tie to your memories. I was no different, but once I got a job and some spending money (about 1974) I began seriously buying records, and not always getting what was current.

So from then on my recollections were not always stamped with the then current music. And I suspect I’ll be remembering 2012 via the Small Faces’ “Ogden’s Gone Nut Flake” released in 1968.

Add to that the fact that the punk explosion of 1977 was neither televised nor radio-ized, unless the purpose was to denigrate it.  So 1977’s significant music was twice removed from me. The punk world was exploding while mine was only growing more insular.

And I had my own experiences: turning twenty, changing my appearance, changing my major, changing friends, meeting (or rather not meeting) girls. Nothing earthshaking, but I still think of it as a very emotional time. Translation: I was sad a lot.

But in a lot of ways, it was a great year. When I really take stock of it, I can think of a dozen great moments, but I have no music to bring me back to them.  The closest thing is Feats Don’t Fail Me Now by Little Feat, which was constantly on my turntable that year. Perhaps because it’s rock and roll party music, I don’t have the intense emotional attachment to it that I do for the records below.

Because they so strongly evoke the sadder moments, they cause me to remember the times as sadder than they actually were.

So I may love these records way out of proportion to what I would otherwise perceive as their merits. Whenever I play them, I’m brought to tears. Every time.


Aztec Two Step:
I would not blame you for judging this record to be lame hippie crap, but songs like "Prisoner" reminds me of unrequited love.

And if you can somehow apply romanticized vision of the beatnik life to your own with "Highway Song", all the better:


Alan Price’s Between Today and Yesterday:


















As I did with Aztec, I listened to Alan Price this during the winter, holed up in my room, alone. I think I was between friends at the time:

Is the title song depressing enough for you?  

But Alan could be gentle, too, but only he made you earn it. And even here, it’s far from joyous. Who’s kidding whom, right Alan?

The loneliness lasted into the summer.  I remember taking a week off from work and not having the slightest idea what to do with it. My friends were all working and my girlfriend, well, she didn’t actually exist.  Elvis decided to die that week, too, but since I hadn’t warmed to him yet, I couldn’t even sincerely partake in the grief.

So I’d wander the city by myself and go to the local bar.  Sad any day, but pathetic on a Tuesday.


Karla Bonoff:




















By the end of the year, things were looking up.  I could listen to sad music like "Falling Star" and not want to slit my wrists.

The incredibly sappy arrangement of “Flying High” doesn’t even rate a youtube video. (and, no I’m too old to figure out how to do that.), which is a shame because it will always evoke being out to dinner with friends, which beat being in the bar with them.  There we were, a mix of boys and girls, all platonic relationships.  And for once, feeling completely comfortable with it because we genuinely liked each other.  

As it turned out there was another group of friends waiting in the wings, too. I’d hung with them a bit during the year, and they’d turn out to be keepers


A Hopeful Ending:
So what was there to be so miserable about? I don’t know. The music maybe. Most likely, it was just being twenty, an age that I could really do something with now, but that at the time seemed so difficult.

And to just finish it off, here’s another song from Aztec Two Step. You may not think it’s great. That’s okay.  I not only love it, but find the part between 1:30 and 2:00 to be transcendent:

Dancer’s All:


But that’s just me liking it more than I should.

Sunday, September 9, 2012

It's All Good!

The first time I heard the phrase It’s All Good was a few years ago during a very tense work meeting. Something got royally screwed up, but someone - not me - had the presence of mind to not let the negativity get out of hand, and said it.

What a magical phrase, I thought! Let’s get past the negatives and just make the best of the situation, it seemed to say, and I was all for that!

But alas, the phrase may have had its day.


The Wedding Feast of Orlando, or Jaybee Turns Hot Coffee Into... Cold Coffee

The Jaybee Family attended a wedding last month, and by guy measures, it all went great.  There was, however, a minor mishap the next morning, when everyone gathered for breakfast.at the hotel.  The hostess didn’t know we were coming so not everyone (us) got to sit together.  By gal measures, this qualified as a catastrophe.

And every time another relative walked into the restaurant, they’d stop by our table, and we’d go through the minutia of the situation all over again. The fact that it was an all you can eat buffet didn’t seem to matter. So having anointed myself the All Wise One, I tried to calm everyone down by saying, It’s All Good, and watch that phrase work its magic on everyone, or go get more home fries..

But after about the tenth time the magic wore off and my wife replied:

“It is NOT all good!  They messed up the arrangements and Michelle (the bride) is upset!”

Okay, I guess that counts as not all good.  Point taken. Nonetheless, I countered with the usually decisive: It Is What It Is.

But Mrs. Jaybee riposted with the admittedly all-powerful F*ck off.

So that’s two of my favorite phrases biting the dust in the space of a single conversation. Mrs. Jaybee’s phrase - immune to fads - has the staying power, it seems.


I Swear It’s True, I Got It Off the Internet:

If you study the etymology of “it’s all good”, you’ll find that it originated in Auschwitz in 1939. In German, “Ich al Guden”’ literally means “I’m not Jewish”, but quickly evolved to mean “Oh, that’s your problem”. (Curiously, in Yiddish, it translates into “We’re f*cked”.)

Over time, this meaning has been lost, and in an age where irony no longer exists (see the RNC platform) it evolved into a positive statement.  Apparently this is the last phase before a phrase passes into actual obsolescence, which is marked by the use of the phrase F*ck off in reply.

So not only is It’s All Good now passing away. As a former adherent, I am also willing to admit that this is a good thing.


Hooray for Everything!:

I say this because I want to complain.  This hasn’t been the best summer - too hot and humid for my taste. But of course, how bad can summer be?  So overall, it was only Good.

And it hasn’t been a great year for music, either.

Oh, It’s been good.  But as I’ve said on other occasions, good just isn’t good enough any more.

Why? Because I don’t have the time I used to have.  And I want to fill that time up with great.

So far, I’ve gotten more music this year than I normally do. This is due to some gift cards, and Amazon.com’s monthly $5 mp3 sales. And I’m having a good time.  There’s been a lot of good music.

But not much GREAT music.

Nothing that changes your life, that interrupts your day, even though it isn’t on.  The closest so far has been Beck’s Sea Change and Imperial Teen’s On.

I’m slowly drowning in a sea of good, when I’d just as soon die from a blast of GREAT to the head.

But when I’m feeling this way, there’s one thing I tell myself that puts it all into perspective:

Hey, Whatta You Gonna Do?

Sunday, September 2, 2012

Not What I Wanted to Talk About

Amazon.com Strikes Again:

Well, Amazon struck again this month, this time with another $2.99 MP3 special. And this time I broke one of my own rules - not the first time, though - by buying music I (mostly) already had on vinyl.

But that’s not what I wanted to talk about.


Missing the Actual Thing:

I still struggle with CDs vs. MP3s. I’m saving space and the environment, but I miss the liner notes! And according to allmusic.com this album has some fine ones. I’d love to be able to access the liner notes and I’ve been trying with linernotes.com.  Meh.

But that’s not what I wanted to talk about, either..


If I Ruled the World...

The first thing I’d do (after World Peace, of course. You’re welcome Andie Macdowell!) is correct all the Greatest Hits Albums.

Come on, you know exactly what I’m talking about! When you see a Greatest Hits record from an artist you like, you mentally correct the song list. You favor the hidden gems over the big hits. And with no licensing or back catalog sales issues to consider, you’re bound to do a better job.

So now with World Peace out of the way (oh, and I slipped in getting a fridge that keeps beer at the perfect temperature) I’m ready to take on improving The Best of the Monkees.

It’s comprised basically of their set list from last year’s tour: And it’s not bad at all.  But with a few tweaks it could be perfect:

  • They missed a couple of good ones from the first record - I would have included the King-Goffin penned “Take a Giant Step” and David Gates great “Saturday’s Child”.
  • There’s a really bad version of “I Want to be Free”. It’s a loud, smarmy, overplayed, oversung travesty. The swirling organ leads me to suspect that they were going for “Like a Rolling Stone”. It’s likely an early version, before they realized that Davey would be the sensitive one.
  • And I’d swap the sweet “Papa Gene’s Blues” for the rowdy “Sweet Young Thing”. But it’s close - James Burton and Glenn Campbell are on both.
  • My only problem with the picks from More of the Monkees is that they didn’t leave enough room for “When Love Comes Knocking at Your Door”.  By the way, I don’t know why other singers (Smashmouth, I’m talking to you) don’t know how to sing “I’m a Believer”. Micky gently bends the notes and raises the song from the merely excellent to the euphoric.
  • And aside from the Mike Nesmith penned “You Told Me” and “Sunny Girlfriend” among the missing, the selections from Headquarters are on the money.

“A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You” convinces me that Neil Diamond should have stuck to writing songs for the Monkees. But no! He had to trade in his guitar for an orchestra. And a cape.

I remember spending an entire summer afternoon listening to the excellent “Words”, thinking it was the A-side of a single. The A-side was, ahem,  “Pleasant Valley Sunday”.  Technologically obsolete Life lesson: Always listen to the other side at least once.

“Porpoise Song” is a pretty cool spacey song that shows what results when the Monkees let some drugs - and Jack Nicholson - into the studio.

But I have to admit, that’s not what I wanted to talk about either.


Jaybee-Childhood-Friend-Mike L:

What I really wanted to talk about was how Jaybee-Childhood-Friend-Mike-L
(not to be confused with:

was just so full of crap. And this record - now, almost 50 years later in clear MP3 - confirms it.  

Let me explain

Back in 1966, me and my friends - Mike L among them - were big Monkees fans. (So big, in fact that we pretended to be them.  I played curtain rod/guitar. Mike played sofa pillow/drums.) And with old record players being what they were, you couldn’t always make out the lyrics. So there certainly was room for misinterpretation. And friend Mike L took that room and the patio, too. His interpretations were of a singularly juvenile nature. After all, he was ten. (I was only nine, but being Irish Catholic, you have to add fifty years.)

Take the following examples:

From “I’m a Believer”:
What I heard: When I needed sunshine, I got rain.
What Mike heard: When I needed sunshine, on my brain

And it get’s worse. This, from “Steppin’ Stone”::
Me: And now you’re walkin’ round like your front page news.
Mike: And now you’re walkin’ round like you’re f*cking news

From “Shades of Grey”:
Me. We had never lived with doubt, or tasted fear
Mike: blah, blah, blah.... tasted beer

And finally, “Some Time in the Morning” - one of the greatest songs of the decade:
Me: And you need no longer wear a disguise
Mike: And you give your underwear to this guy.

And he’d argue with a straight face! He really wanted to believe his versions were the correct ones. The more serious the song, the more ludicrous his interpretation. I guess he felt life was more interesting this way. Thank God Belle and Sebastian’s “Stars of Track and Field” didn’t come out until the nineties. Otherwise he would have been insufferable.

Or maybe he was just messing with me. Either way, I was dumb enough to argue with him. He’s probably laughing as we speak, 50 years later.

And his influence is still felt today, both in the music industry - have you noticed how as sound quality improves, lyrics are getting more juvenile? - but more importantly, in his role as translator at the UN.


Let’s not even discuss Jaybee-Adolescent-Friend-Joe...

...and brother of Mike-C, who took over for Mike L as I hit my teens, giving me all of the sexual and drug interpretations of rock songs. Him being such a huge Zeppelin fan, he was sort of an authority.

And of course, he was always right. You really couldn’t put up much of an argument over “The Lemon Song.”

And sadly, these revelations made rock and roll less fun for me. Just like how your teen years are less fun than your childhood.

But like I said, that’s not what I wanted to talk about.